UK Column News - 17th November 2025

Good afternoon. It's Monday the 17th of November 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson, and my host in studio today is Ben Rubin. Welcome to the program, Ben. Thank you, Mike. And joining us by video link are Sandy Adams and Diane Rasmussen. Later in the program, we'll be looking at how impact investing is being used as well government

takeover effectively. And we're also going to look at assisted dying and how that's going in Canada, concerns from the climate lobby about disinformation and the latest on the roll out of 5G in the UK. But we're going to begin today with the with the UK Health Security Agency and links

between excess deaths and COVID shots. Because on Saturday, the Telegraph put out this article, which many may have seen headlined government withholding data that may link COVID jobs to excess deaths, as if that should come as a surprise to anyone but the UK. The the argue, sorry, the article says. The UK Health Security Agency argued that releasing the data would lead to distress or anger if bereaved relatives, so a link

were to be discovered. They said public health officials also argued that publishing the data risked damaging the well-being and mental health of the families and friends of people who died. Now if you remember what the ONS graph looked like at the time, it was clear that there was something pretty nasty going on. So we just put it on screen there. Now this is largely ignored by politicians and journalists everywhere. And now the Telegraph is doing what?

Trying to cover their tracks? What's, what's going on here, Ben? I'd say so, yeah. I mean, it's quite amazing that they, they don't want to release it because they want to spare us. You see, it's all about us. It's not about escaping accountability. Indeed, We'll, we'll come up, we'll come on to that in a second. Now the campaign to have the data released has been led by this campaign group US for them who requested the data via

Freedom of Information requests. The refusal from the UKHSA said nothing at all about distress or anger when they were answering these Freedom of Information requests, but instead said that publishing the data could quotes could lead to misinformation. It would have an adverse impact on vaccine uptake in in the public. So the question is, which was

it? Was it they were worried about the alarm and distress that it might cause the public or was it because they were worried about vaccine uptake? The UK Health Security Agency also claimed that the data released could carry a risk of individuals being identified despite data being anonymised. But hold on, the same people tell us regularly that it's OK to collect bulk data on all of us on on all of us NHS users because it's perfectly safe as

the data is anonymised. So I'm not sure they can have it both ways. They're going to try. They're going to try. Well, let's just have a look at this quick quote here from them because they said protecting patient confidentially confidentiality is of critical importance. Releasing this data presented a real possibility that it could be used to identify individuals which could result in significant distress. So that's that was their position.

And that's pretty hilarious, bearing in mind they didn't really worry too much about causing distress in 2020 when Spy B, for example, put this in their minutes. A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently

personally threatened. The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased amongst those who are complacent, using hard hitting emotional messaging and saying that social disapproval from one's community can play an important role in preventing anti social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro social behaviour. So they didn't seem too worried about causing alarm and distress

at that point in time. Just including the UKHSA in the whole covidocracy that that existed at that point. It wasn't them specifically they were making those statements, but they were part parcel of this, or at least the precursors were. We're part and parcel of of this entire regime. So it. Was formed in that period as well. It was absolutely Khsa was was an outcrop of that early. Absolutely. Covidocracy.

Yes, absolutely. And that security word that they introduced, that's very much aligned to this stuff. Yes. So anyway, I, I think, you know, I applaud the organization help, you know, attempt to get this information out in the public and it's supposed to be public data. And and the campaign group was busy was was pointing out that of course, this data has been shared with pharmaceutical companies already, but it has not yet been shared with the public. So I think it's about time it was.

I couldn't agree more. So Ben, let's come on to the

issue of impact economy. We've talked about this quite a bit over the last couple of months, but what's what's it doing with respect to government? Was completely transforming government. And actually what you've just talked about is a really good example of the impact economy in action because we don't really

have a government anymore. We have a public private marketplace designed to deliver a global agenda handed down by the UN in the World Economic Forum in a manner that is designed to maximize profits to international capital investors. That's what it's all about. I've talked about this a lot previously. I've used this term before woke corporatism, which I'm just going to going to drag back in. Essentially this is the, the, the model of governance that we're currently being subjected to.

And it's a combination of intersectional Marxism, which is the, the woke bit, the kind of DEI side of things, combined with the corporatism, the integration of the, the, the market in the state, which is also the definition of fascism. I call this an unholy alliance between power and money. And this to me is basically what Fabianism is. No, the Fabian Society, we've got a Fabian government at the moment. This is Fabianism. It's also stakeholder capitalism, Same thing.

It's also the third way like you were talking about last week. And it's also impact investment. That's ultimately what this is all about. And the impact investment market is in the ascendant. And who better to describe that to us than Kieran Boyle, the chair of the Impact Investing Institute? At the moment, governments everywhere are facing a challenge.

They're all really ambitious to what they want to achieve, but they're all facing increasingly tight financial environments and impact investing can play a really important role because when governments are tight on finances, they need to find alternate sources of capital, people that they can partner with. But it really matters about who you partner with, what their incentives are.

Are they aligned and? What you have in in impact investors is partners who can bring capital, solution focused capital, but focus on the same sorts of things that governments care about, improved social outcomes improved. Environmental Outcomes. He seems like a lovely man, doesn't he? Delightful. A delightful man. What could possibly go wrong?

That was Kieran Boyle, the chair of the Impact Investing Institute. And I'm going to say, and I'll be careful so that the lawyers don't get on the phone, that he looks like a SPIV. Are you familiar with the term SPIV? I've certainly are. A dodgy geezer who makes his money in dishonest ways just looks like one. I'm not saying he is a spiv, I'm just saying that he looks like one. It's the little Tash that he's got going on there. Yeah, quite a quite a thing. Anyway.

Who is he? Well, we said he's the chair of the Impact Investing Institute, which is actually a public private partnership in itself. So that was set up between the City of London and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, DCMS. It's backed by BlackRock and bunch of other people like that. Boyle is also the director of the Marshall Institute at the LSE. That's Paul Marshall, the backer of GB News.

So if any GB News fans out there or people that you know that like watching GB News, this guy works for Paul Marshall. So this is ultimately Paul Marshall's agenda that we're talking about here. He's also the chief executive of the 100 X Impact Accelerator. We can get that back on screen and have a little look at the logo there, which is embedded into the LSC. Very influential guy this by the way, better bet. He's also a non executive, better society capital, formerly big society capital.

He's been there for nearly ten years now. And before that he was a director in the Government Innovation Group from 2008 to 2009. So he straddled Blair, Brown and Cameron working in the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, at Downing St. various other places. And during that time he became a young global leader of the World Economic Forum in 2014.

I say this guy here, this individual bundles together the collected interest of all of those different groups and those different organisations, and he's right in the mix of this process of transformation of the British state. Now let's hear a little bit more about impact investment from Stephen Merse, who is the chief executive of Better Society Capital. The government should really start to build stronger relationships that impact

investors. The government has a really significant mission around turning the UK into a clean energy superpower and bringing communities and local people as into part of that. And we've recently committed significant capital into a new community energy investment facility to support that and build on past successful

investments in community energy. You've also got really strong track record of impact investment in the health sphere, which is another one of the government's key missions, both looking at prevention through community based initiatives such as the very successful Thrive initiative in North East Lincolnshire that helps people with long term conditions stay out of hospital and and succeed in their lives without so much

health intervention. Yeah. So that's Stephen Mirrors from Better Society Capital, the chief executive, you know, say of Better Society Capital, who absolutely reeks of civil service. That guy. It was in the civil service for about 20 years before heading over to Better Society Capital, which is basically the extension of the civil service. It was spun out of Cabinet Office by Cameron back in 2012, and it was the precursor to the impact investment marketplace

that we're talking about today. All of this completely hand in glove with the city. So those two videos I just showed came from a short series that came out earlier this year from the City of London. They're presenting themselves as the global city. They want to help deliver government using impact LED venture capital and private equity so that they can make loads of money. And they want to do this internationally importantly, so that the UK is a test case for this stuff.

We talked about this quite a bit recently. They're, they're trying, they're experimenting here, they're building out the models for how they're going to deploy this elsewhere and then they want to export that internationally. And they're talking about this being a £1.9 trillion a year global marketplace. That's ultimately what the city and these investors are sniffing around and that's ultimately

what our government is becoming. It's what it's being set up to enable and these organisations, we talked about the city, we talked about the Impact Investing Institute, which as I said, was set up by the city with the government. So that's public private partnership right there, the British Venture Capital Association, BCVA and Better Society Capital. These are the people that are really driving this forward, right? And there was a big announcement on this front.

As I said, it's been going on for for quite some time now, but there's been some really big developments over the past week. Let's hear now from Darren Jones, the private secretary to Keir Starmer. So can I start by saying thank you for everything you've done and for the impact you've had on so many local organisations and through them, the lives of the

people they serve. Because for all the good work over many years, the community I now represent in Parliament still has far too few young people being given the chance to succeed in whichever way they wish to. I feel lucky to represent my home in Parliament, but I do not want my story to be exceptional. I want it to be normal. And so my pledge to all of you this evening is I will use what power I have for whatever time I have it to make sure that that's

the case in every part. Of our nation because we all know that when governments empower communities, specifically those who know the local area, the people, the problems and the opportunities inside and out people like. You that that's when truly transformative and long lasting change can happen. So last year I set up the Social Impact Investment Advisory Group and that it has today published its report on what government can do to help more.

I can assure you that will be taking these recommendations seriously and acting on them within a matter of weeks. So it was Darren Jones, I said private secretary to Keir Starmer, he's actually, sorry, chief secretary to the Prime Minister. He's also the chancellor of the duty of Lancaster. He's had those positions for the past three months. You've been thrust right to the forefront, doing a lot of communication work for the

government at the moment. They've got to put him out front because no one wants to see the others talking about anything. So this guy's been leading the charge. He's the MP for Bristol Northwest, been in that position since 2017. Background as a solicitor, when he was at BT as a solicitor, he was on their smart Cities team. Tells you quite a lot about where this is all going to. He's also been receiving quite a bit of impact investing of his

own. So if you go to look at the register of interests on the The Gov website, you can see that he just received 44 and a bit grand from Lord Sainsbury, who's been splurging huge amounts of cash on progressive political issues quite some time now. That event, by the way, at Downing St. was running partnership with this organization. She's UK Community Foundations in around for quite a long time, about 50 years.

And just worth noting that their president is this guy, Lord Michael Hastings, former top brass at KPMG, World Economic foreign strategic partner, wearing a UNSDG pin in the image there on the right hand side of screen. So again, just tying all these things together, separate organisations, same agenda. This is what's driving state policy right now. Now that event that Darren Jones is speaking out was the launch of this report.

So this is mobilising the impact economy as partners in national renewals based on three pillars, organising to mobilise and support the impact economy, embedding the mobilisation mindset into the government and then unlocking resources and participation at scale. This is the total transformation of the state essentially into what they call a market enabler. That's what the government is becoming, a market enabler. Still a regulator, a grant maker, a commissioner, A

guarantor. So they're actually going to underwrite private sector risk. That's interesting, isn't it? They even wrote that down. And then finally, an issuer. So they're going to be raising capital through public debt instruments. So this is just PFI spending writ large across the whole of government. Printing money. Printing money, I mean.

Yeah. And, and lumbering the tax payer with extraordinary amounts of debt that never gets paid down, overcoming barriers to this new model, whether those are cultural barriers inside the civil service or other bits of government or importantly, just just writing new laws. So if the regulatory environment doesn't allow for it, well, we'll change it, right? We've got to encourage partnerships, not discourage partnerships. This is already a huge business ultimately inside of the state.

They've done some work mapping out different levels of investment across the five missions, whether that's kick starting growth, clean energy, safer streets, the NHS, breaking down barriers to opportunity. And that's coming from philanthropy, social investment, institutional impact investment. And they're actually explaining in quite some detail where these funds are coming from and what they're all about. They've developed this model for how they're going to, they call

it the staircase model. They're going to go to plant, nurture, establish, grow and mature these initiatives across the whole of government. They've got ways of different ways of cutting up risk and return, different types of financial financial instruments that they're going to use, different participants in the marketplace from ventures to private equity, everything in between different types of support required from government. And all of this is, is based on outcomes.

So they'll talk about outcomes based contracts so people can extract value only when they actually deliver the outcome they've signed up for. But what that necessitates is Sandy talked about a couple of months ago actually is total surveillance. So in order to know if they've delivered an outcome, they have to surveil you in order to understand if you can actually then trigger the payment, right? So this is where a lot of that stuff comes in.

They're already acting on it. It's rushing ahead. One of the recommendations that was in the report was to set up listing the office for the impact economy. This is housed in the Cabinet Office. You can see at the bottom there, Darren Jones is going to be running it. He's the ministerial lead. And ultimately this is about cross government collaboration.

So cutting across all departmental divisions and silos as they talk about them being a front door for institutional capital to come into government to coordinate those relationships, to build capacity and extend the government's ability to to engage with this stuff. While at the same time identifying and supporting new partnerships, building the marketplace proactively for these investors to come in and stop stripping profits out of of

government. And importantly, this is a said, this is being run out of Cabinet Office. They have what they call a hub and spoke model. The DCMS are absolutely in the picture. Treasury #10 partnerships, Union unit, the Department of the Business and Trade. They're going to work openly and collaboratively with stakeholders, obviously. And this is about doing government differently, total transformation of the state. This is what the change agenda

is all about, impact. Impact and no change actually, because because this is a great example of the Unit party in action. We're talking about the same organizations that were established under the Cameron Tory government. It's being absolutely pursued as hard as it can be by the current Labour regime. What's the difference between them? Nothing. And would it be any different under reform? Absolutely not. Because Paul Marshall is. For for his words, for the, for

his words for the city. Yes. And the city's is shaping this, so yeah. OK, Thank you, Ben. OK, let's welcome sadly to the

program. And Sunday, of course, the assisted dying bill continues to deliver its way through, excuse the pun, through Parliament at the moment. It's always good to look at what's happening in countries where this policy has been implemented for a number of years and see what's happening there. So bring us up to speed with what's going on in Canada. Yeah, yeah. Good afternoon, Mike and and Ben

and indeed everyone. Now, with the research we've all been doing over the last decade or so, we've known that there's been a depopulation agenda ongoing since around the 1970s with the Club of Rome reports and the likes of Bill Gates and Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab, they've all spoken about it. And also there was the Deagle population forecast for 2025 published by the CIA from 2014 to 2020, which I'm sure all of you will know about. Umm, we've, if not, I'll put

them in the show notes. We've hoped that this would never happen, but umm, we have to, we have to call it out nonetheless. But according to a recent piece in in the Sage Journal of Death and Dying published by the Health Canada, umm, they now lay bare a cost saving exercise and it's so cold and extreme. It's really hard to believe that they published it openly, to be honest. Umm as Canadian veteran Kelsey Sharon highlighted, the analysis

claims that. From uh 2027 to 2047, the Canadian government will save 1273 trillion not through breakthroughs in medicine or better care, but by ending lives. More than 14,000,000 Canadians at their own data, you know, as their own data shows, are expected to be disposed of through medical assistance in dying or made as they call it, rather than receiving palliative care, mental health support or actual help.

So that's, you know, the, the staggering amount is 14.7 million human beings killed by the state. Now let's hear what Kelsey Sharon, she's a veteran campaigner in Canada and she what she says about this. So the Journal of Death and Dying recently this year of 2025, came out and expressed what Health Canada's plans look like to do to save money. They are on track starting 2027 to 2047 to save $1.273 trillion by providing 14.7 million Canadians with MAID rather than palliative care.

What was that #14.7 million Canadians? Over 9 million of those are projected to be elderly. Over 4 million of those are projected to be the mentally ill and suicidal. Over 300,000 of those are projected to be the indigenous population and then everyone else, addicts, homeless and otherwise.

So Canada's running eugenics program and they're planning to expand that with the start of mentally ill only qualification in 2027. And for those that are find those stats as disgusting as I do, you can go check out the on the Sage Journal or the Death Journal of Death and Dying. They break it all down for you. They go through the numbers.

We've also done it on the series as well. 9 million of these deaths are forecast to be the elderly, the people who built the country, parents, grandparents. Another 4 million of people suffering from mental illness, depression or suicidal thoughts. Exactly the people who need compassion and treatment. 300,000 are projected to be indigenous and the rest are discarded. Discarded of society, the poor, the addicts and the homeless.

This depopulation agenda is wearing it's, it's kind of wearing the the mask of being somehow health reform. It's also the same ideology that drove the last century's euthanasia programmes and the belief that some lives cost too much and aren't worth living. And it's funded by the taxpayer. I mean, I can't believe they've got it all sewn up. It isn't stopping at Canada's borders either.

The same conversation is unfolding across the rest of the Western world from the UKNH processes build their End of Life Cost Management Bill is openly discussed and the US think tanks pushing optimised death as a budget strategy. A narrative is being seeded everywhere that euthanasia is empowerment or some form of dignity, when in fact it's a system itself that created the despair and the poverty and the

mental illness. The powerful have effectively declared open season on on the vulnerable. Our UK assisted dying bill reached its committee stage in Parliament last week, Friday the 14th of November. Will we go the same direction as Canada where it appears to be an open movement to kill people? It's up to us to campaign our local MPs and make a noise about this. So I really think our MPs don't understand what's going on at

all. Now we've, we've also got coming up this at the moment is the Public Authorities Fraud, Error and Recovery Bill, which also also moved to the committee stage last week where it's sort of ping pongs around before it goes to Royal Assent. Now this is all linked.

There's been some opposition to this by MPs where there's, there's a Lib Dem MP called John Miller who, who's the, I think he's the MP for Horsham and what he has to say about, about what's what's going on. And he says, yeah, he said everyone accepts that we need to keep a handle on fraud, but the powers being taken in the bill gives the DWP access to people's private bank accounts. Now what he's worried about is that this could actually 'cause people to take their own lives

and it has done in the past. So what, what he's what he's saying is, is, is, is he's got very grave concerns and a lot of the MPs do. And I think we really have to push this, that in fact this is this, this is a bit, you know, this is definitely dodgy. Umm, so the government repeats the same lines. We're only targeting benefit fraudsters. That's nonsense. The bill covers fraud, error, debt and overpayments, which

usually is errors by the DWP. Yet banks will be forced to hand over people's financial data to simply check avail, you know, sort of the eligibility. Now, once that precedence in place, once banks and government systems are wired together, it never goes away. And then comes the most chilling part, direct deduction payments. The government will be able to reach into your bank account and take money if you dispute the debt. We already know where this

leads. Disabled people who've been hounded over DWP errors in the past and push deeper into despair. Coroners have explicitly linked DWP actions to suicides. Now there's a campaigner called Liz Liz and she's campaigns for the disabled and she warned MPs and peers that the care funding crisis will create pressure to those to who might want to choose assisted suicide as a as a way of getting out of it. And I think we could listen to her now what she says about all this.

DPAC and every other disability rights organization says no to assisted dying, or as we call it, assisted suicide. We live in a world that sees disabled people as better off dead than disabled. When you're living in a world with attitudes like that, it is not safe to legalize making it easier for certain groups of people to have a medically

assisted death. Until our demands are met, our core demands for an inclusive and Equitable Life for all disabled, ill, and older people, for all people, in fact, we can't even consider legalizing assisted suicide. It is not safe. This is not, by the way, a bunch of religious people saying let's not change the law. This is a group of disabled people, many of us, who've considered this subject with great concern.

And we know it is dangerous to legalize and change the law and to remove the legal protection that currently exists around assisted suicide. We demand this government does not legalize assisted suicide. For terminally ill people, ill people, disabled people. Now we only need to look at Canada to see the end game. Disabled people quietly steered towards state approved death because they've been deemed too

costly to support. And that's what happens when governments governments begin to weigh human life in purely financial terms. Benefit claimants are simply the testing ground. Once this system is operational, it will expand to taxes, fines, carbon rationing, energy use and whatever future governments consider necessary. This is the thin end of the wedge. If we don't stop it now, the vulnerable will suffer first and the rest of us will wake up to a world where the state access our

finances. And it isn't, you know, exceptional or limited. It's permanent. All the details of of this will be in the show notes back to you. Sandy, thank you very much for that. OK, let's move on. If you like what the UK column does, you would like to support

us, head over to the front page of the website. You'll get a link to the page which explains how you can support us. We do need your financial support if you possibly can. If you can't support us financially, please share material you find on the website, including perhaps Germ Warfare. It's tonight at 7:00 PM. Germ is speaking to Jeff Berwick on the On Reality being a 3D video game.

I'm not sure I necessarily I totally agree with that, but you know that I'm going to be watching with interest anyway. And then at 9:00 PM tonight, former Taiwan Independent supporter, now a pragmatic voice in Taiwan's future. This is Angelika Young speaking to Carl for the Silk and Steel podcast. Join us at 9 for that, Ryan, as his presentation from the Hope Freedom Festival is finally going out at 1:00 PM tomorrow. So join us for that as well.

And of course, we'll be back for the news on Wednesday as well, 1:00 PM as usual. But in the meantime, let's get on with some other matters. And well, Diane, over the last

couple of weeks, we've been talking about the increasing, how do we describe it, desperation among certain people that they're not being believed and their agendas are not being accepted by people. And this applies equally within the climate science community. And they're very concerned, it seems, about disinformation. Yes, Mike. Hello Ben, Sandy and everyone. Glad to be here. Glad to be here today to give you this report on what's been going on at COP 30, which is still ongoing.

This actually follows up a little bit, starting with the disinformation segment that Mike and Charles did back on the 7th of November, talking about the UK statements at the UN 4th Committee by Letitia Loonen when she said that the UK is indeed deeply concerned by the growing threats to information integrity. Now, first of all, let's define what information integrity means according to the UN.

It's not my definition necessarily as a librarian of 25 years, but the UN defined it last year as existing. Quote. Where freedom of expression is fully enjoyed and where accurate, reliable information free from discrimination and hate is available to all in an open, inclusive, safe and secure information environment.

So at COP 30 last Wednesday, the 12th of November was Information Integrity Day and let's watch this lightheart YouTube video that was played through to show what they think they mean by information integrity. What is the most absurd thing that you've ever heard on social media about climate change? That the ice in the Antarctic and Arc is not decreasing but

increasing. I think that the most crazy thing I've ever heard is that it's OK that our plan is dying because there's other plans that we can live. Today is Information Integrity Day here at COP. This information about climate change is spreading faster than ever, fueling myths and misconceptions about the climate crisis and the solutions to address it.

Because tackling climate disinformation has never been more important, and to learn how to address it, we asked Charlotte Skadden to share her insights. I'm Charlotte Skadden, and I'm Senior Advisor on Information Integrity at the United Nations. We're all targeted.

By climate disinformation in one way or another and anyone who uses online spaces has come across climate disinformation there are many different tactics used to try and undermine climate action in information spaces and they range. From. Classic disinformation, denial of climate change to disinformation around solutions. So we need all hands on deck to address climate information and threats to climate information integrity.

And that includes governments, it includes tech platforms and companies, it includes civil society, it includes advertisers. It's really important that we try and empower ourselves to recognise it when we see it and to share that information with others. You might also be targeted by it. Fighting climate disinformation starts with knowing the facts and sharing them. Together, we can make truth go viral. So great to make truth go viral.

All right, well, we like you look at a range of press releases related to what they said at the UN. But first let's look at this ex post where basically they're saying this is what they're going to be doing. This is a landmark declaration. All of the press releases and

tweets. And so that I've seen about this has been saying that essentially this is the first time that this has been an important thing at COP at a COP conference, The very first time actually for information integrity at any COP conference. Some of the other press releases that the UN has put out about this has said this is the age of disinformation, which I would probably agree with in certain

ways. This again saying about the wave of truth, the COP of truth, which is on the the next press release, which is again from the UN saying that it is now targeting disinformation as a threat to climate action. So again, obviously the science is out. The consensus all says, well, it's all just, you know, we need this information because we all now know that we have to do absolutely everything apparently according to all scientists

everywhere. So let's look at this next video, which was part of that ex post pay potential. If you look at the tie on the the first person that appears, you'll see a very sustainable development pattern on the tie. Let's take a look at this. For a few years now, several global risk reports, for example, the Davos World Economic Forum Global reports of risks.

They put as global risk number one in this planet, not climate change or climate disasters, but disinformation, Global risk number one and global risk number 2 is actually climate change. Purveyors of climate disinformation don't simply deny climate change. They undermine climate action by attacking researchers, scientists and journalists personally by questioning the scientific consensus around climate change and creating false narratives around climate solutions.

And and they're also seeking to skew the perceptions of policy makers of of the people here negotiating. So for many years we have been trying to raise awareness or sound the alarms that this interaction between information integrity and climate change is absolutely vital for both fields, for the field of information integrity, but also for the field of climate change and those two crucial issues, they depend on each other, they need to interact more.

So you can see the full press conference that some of that was based on, including the the lady wearing the Sustainable Development Goals pin Charlotte and some of the other people in that press conference said things like, quote, disinformation and denialism undermine trust in science and institutions. It feeds and fuels hate speech

and extremism. Some of the questions that came up in the full press conference, I watched the whole thing so that the viewers don't have to, but some of the questions came from example from the Guardian who when a reporter asked why are the fossil fuel lobbyists present and basically what can we do about these lobbyists that have been present here at this

particular COP conference. It's important to note as well that this all goes back to the UN Global Digital Compact, which was released in September of 2024.

Paragraph 35 E states quote encourage United Nations entities in collaboration with governments and relevant stakeholders to assess the impact of misinformation and disinformation on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals or SGG 17. SGG 17 is partnerships for the goals, and this basically talks about how the goals are accomplished through various sources of funding and

organizations. I'll come back to how this is done at the end of my report, but I just want to remind viewers that essentially, if you hear the word sustainable within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, it really means unsustainable. It's all an inversion of language. Now, how is this done, particularly through UNESCO and other organizations?

UNESCO is the one who has published what they've called the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change. So what we see here is from their website talking about COP 30 in particular, they have several documents. This COP 30 document talks about exactly what they're going to be doing here and how it's going to be done. That basically they have signed this declaration, which I'm going to cover here in just a

minute. It's all about how to fight the, as they're calling it, catastrophic global heating. And this is being sabotaged the by a surge of climate

disinformation. And so these falsehoods are getting in the way of stopping all this apparent global boiling that is going on. So before November this year, earlier this summer, they put out a call to action for this initiative for information integrity and climate change, asking for individuals and organizations to come forward to come up with solutions on how to fight this apparent problem.

It says through a global fund and through various ways of getting this funded and sourced that this is what we need. So they're looking for organizations are looking for money, they're looking for various things and how they can get this actually going into play. And once again, you could apply to, to contribute to this. Apparently the, the applications are not closed. So I wasn't able to see what it was that they were actually

looking for. I would have loved to see the application form, but unfortunately that's no longer available on that website as well. They, they talked about this initiative at the COP of Truth, which was directly from this taken from this website.

And this was really interesting because it said you can read more about the unprecedented prominence of IT information integrity at COP 30. Now, apparently before Cop 30, I don't know if the first 29 Cops did not care about integral information, but this is now a a very important point here in Cop 30. So we can't really speak exactly

to what was going on there. But the call to action again is talking about here's what we have to do, here's what we need, here are the people that we need to have to be able to contribute. So what happened at the November conference last week? Well, we now, as a result of the call to action and as a result of this now being the cop of truth, there was an open letter signed talking about this declaration on information integrity.

So the open letter was signed by 134 organizations, including the Club of Rome at the University of Leeds, for an example of an academic partner, Extinction Rebellion, and 127 individuals, which of course included Sandrine Dixon, exactly the president of the Club of Rome, and many others. And this information about the declaration was saying, basically here are here are the ways that we're going to do it.

We are going to do research. We are going to share practical tools, policies, communications, advertising campaigns.

Of course, we have to have the the propaganda campaigns, trusted voices and influencers, media sustainability, protecting journalists, activists, communicators, scientists, protecting data, data sets, transparency of placement data information, digital literacy related to climate change in particular, and of course, donating financial resources to UNESCO's Global Fund for Information Integrity on Climate Change. And according to this, Antonio

Guterres, the UN Secretary General, said that, quote, we must fight the coordinated disinformation campaigns impeding global progress on climate change. So that's the open letter, if we go into the actual declaration statements. And it says it's drafted by the members of the committee of this initiative for information

integrity on climate change. And it basically says, well, as a result of the Global Digital Compact from 2024 Summit of the future and looking at these global principles for information integrity, we now, quote, reaffirm our shared responsibility to ensure that societies around the world are empowered with the knowledge and information they need to act urgently and decisively in the face of the climate crisis.

So I went to look at this global Fund to see exactly how much they were looking to fund and what they were going to do about it. So this is from one of the UN websites saying that since their launch in June 2025, they had received 447 proposals from nearly 100 countries. So this might not be entirely up to date.

It could be more by now. And they're saying that the role of the funding is to uphold the integrity of information related to climate change and calls on funders to donate this fund and support projects that promote information integrity locally,

nationally and internationally. And it will contribute again, as I said, through search funding, investigative journalism, strategic work, communications, advocacy, cooperation with organizations, carrying out related activities, which of course goes back to SDG 17 partnerships for the goals. This is how it's all going to be done.

So I'd like to say as UK columns, librarian and information correspondence, that after 25 years in the library field, I, I was, you know, I was really important to me to hold the line to make sure that the basic principles of librarianship and information access were provided. Everything is available. But what they're doing here is obviously only pushing the things that the UN wants them to

push. And so if we look here at what they have been doing in the Internet International Federation for Library Associations and Institutions, which is an organization I used to belong to, I used to have an elected role in this organization. Actually, their press release from the 10th of November said COP 30 begins. Culture adaptation and information integrity are key themes for the library field. So how are they contributing according to this press release?

Well, one is the state of library engagement and climate communication and education. This report was funded by the Gates Foundation. It basically said that now libraries are contributing more to sustainability event, to climate action, and so they need to be doing more on the climate side. They said they would be contributing to the global goal on adaptation.

So specifically here around how the cultural heritage sector contributes to sustainable development goals, the Paris Agreement, and of course, as always, the importance of equity and inclusion. And so this is how it's going to be done through the Action Agenda, which is one of the top 30 documents which we've talked about as well.

And they're contributing to this in different ways, including contributing to a collaborative plan to accelerate solutions that will explore narratives and storytelling as catalyst for climate action. So that's the way I guess libraries can contribute and helping libraries around the world adapt and build resilience to the changing climate. Now, they did also contribute to the UN global Principles for Information Integrity, which they were very proud of.

And they said that these principles quote responded to concerns about governments themselves sharing misinformation. The quote info Demic experienced during the COVID-19 quote pandemic. Those are my quotes. Why are worries about how the way Internet platforms themselves risked accelerating the spread of fake news and growing awareness to the real world impacts of online hate speech.

Now the human global principles themselves for information integrity are is another document and these will all be available in the show notes. But basically there are five points that they are using that are these principles. So one is societal trust and resilience.

You'll get the role of platforms and acting in trustworthy ways, healthy incentives, looking at business models that favour click bait, public empowerment with some references to digital literacy and enabling people to exercise choice when choosing platforms. Which is great news for UK column to have Choice, Transparency in research.

And finally, Independent, Free and Pluralistic Media, which discusses the need to resist restrictions to press freedom, support independent journalism and the need for ethical conduct within the press. So Mike, maybe this is some good news for UK column after all. Perhaps so. Perhaps so. OK, Well, thank you for that,

Diane. Ben, let's move on then for the capture of young minds. And maybe that's a related topic actually. It's absolutely a related topic because even with infinite wealth and power, their narrative is falling to pieces it would seem. So the last roll of the dice is to get hold of the minds of young people and make sure that they don't listen to disinformation and they are democratically resilient in all of these awful terms that we keep hearing from these people.

But let's hear quickly now about a new report from Demos looking inside the mind of a 16 year old. From Manchester. They're both with me now and what they find out may surprise you. So can I start with you, this great odyssey? What did you learn that surprised you?

The biggest surprise was the difference between the moral panic that we see online and what we did that we saw during our DES research phase, and the reality the moral panic around young people not believing in democracy is simply not true. They do believe in democracy. And they want to preserve it, but they're looking for powerful messages that I've done correctly. But the fact that they're brainwashed by Andrew Tate, simply not true.

Every time we mention Andrew Tate's name in a classroom, they laughed us off. They're not. They're aware of some of his messages, but they know the hard reality. This fact that they're brainwashed by the algorithm, They're impacted by it, but they're curious and they're thoughtful and they know what they want and they know what they want to hear, and they'll look for good voices. This is remarkably cheering. I wasn't expecting a cheerful conversation at this time in the

evening. What kinds of things do you if you're a politician, what kinds of things should you be thinking about more when you focus on younger people? Be honest, be direct and cut the BS essentially, and meet them where they are. If you do meet them where they are, you can, you'll see incredible. Like what Zach Polanski is doing right now is incredibly

interesting. He's got a podcast, he's really active on TikTok, he's bringing on really interesting American names like Hassan Abbey, who's very popular on the left, left side of American politics. And we need to see something similar like that from, in my personal opinion, from Labour and, and yeah, and just clearly show your values and clearly tell a story. I will just say then the lip sync there was was their issue, not ours. That was their issue, yes. I accept no responsibility for

that. So, but we thought we wanted people to hear the clip. Actually, it's quite interesting to get a sense of what the liberal progressive political classes inside the M25 are desperately trying to find out about, which is what's going on with 16 year olds. Obviously they've just been given the vote that's kind of forthcoming. So this is a crucial constituency and it was all relating to this report. We can get that on screen inside the mind of a 16 year old.

From Andrew Tate to Bonnie Blue to Nigel Farage, what the first time voters think about social media, politics, the state of Britain and their futures. The references here are just so obvious. Andrew Tate, Bonnie Blue, Nigel Farage, what do you think of these things? And actually, it turns out the 16 year olds are not idiots. They're not idiots Like the people who work at Demos are clearly idiots and the people that go to Demos events are idiots, right? They're much more sophisticated

than people. Give me credit for this report. We just nip it to look at Polly Curtis, the the chief executive of Demos, talking about the fact he came from Peter Hyman, who was a political strategist for Tony Blair and Keir Starmer. So gives you a sense of where this is coming from. He didn't speak in that video. That was the chap Shuab Gamotti, who she just calls us black. I hate racial categorisation. It's just so crude, right? But that's what these people are

like. They go Gen. Z, you all think this and black, you all think this. And then when it doesn't turn out to be the case, they they don't know what's going on, right? And this is all about power ultimately and building democratic resilience in this age group to make sure that they don't fall out of this democratic system that people like Polly Curtis are really keen on. And I'd actually recommend going to have a read of the report is

quite well done piece of work. My main takeaways from me were the first of all, there's no such thing as Gen. Z. Like it's obviously a lot more complicated than that. You're talking about that two or three generations of people right now, as I said, 16 year olds are not idiots. Some young women are very disengaged. Some other young women are completely terrorised by the world at the moment and they want to burn the whole thing down, start again.

And they they they in brutalised and misinformed in a really malicious way. And young men in particular are questioning the narrative. And they're doing that with various levels of varying levels of patriotism, which was quite encouraging, to be honest with you, which tells me that Demos and this crowd have got a big problem on their hands.

And just a very final quick note about the provenance of the reporting, That chap that was speaking just there, Shurab Gamotti, he actually is employed by this organization, which is the Future Governance Forum, whose job they see is reforming the state. And again, this links directly back to what I was talking about earlier in my first report.

And they are backed by, amongst others, Amazon, the British Venture Capital Association, who I did speak about earlier, William Perrin and Francesca Sainsbury. So the Sainsbury's family, again, they're all over this space at the moment. And then also Vanguard, one of the biggest asset managers in the world.

So these are the people funding this activity in order to understand what 16 year olds are thinking about so that they can sneak whatever their agenda items are on any particularly given day pass and when it comes to the next election. Yeah, OK. Thanks and for that. Now let's move on then to to 5G. Now as some may be aware,

there's still no real 5G infrastructure rolled out in the UK yet. What we have at this point is an enhancement of 4G which is branded as 5G. This is because very major part of the 5G roll out wasn't yet licensed. I'm referring to the really high frequency component of the technology known as millimetre wave spectrum. And before any of the telecoms companies could begin building out this capability, they have

to pay money. Or they had to pay money via an auction process run by Ofcom, which aside from being the chief sensor here in the UK, is also regulating the telecoms industry, including who can use which frequencies on the radio

spectrum. So Ofcom announced the final auction results on the 24th of October this year were three winners, EO 2 and Vodafone 3 each paid Ofcom 13,000,000 lbs for the right to use 800 megabytes, 800 megahertz bands of the 26 gigahertz band and 800, I'm sorry, one gigahertz of the 40 gigahertz band. So Virgin Media O2 already has 2000 small cells deployed, but not none of these have this capability yet. They can be have have millimetre wave technology deployed on them.

Now they are going to be aiming to get those into stadiums, arenas, transport hubs, it's all mainly towns and cities related what they call high density populations and so on. EE has around just over 1000 small cells so far which they can deploy this in and they're also looking at the same types of venues for their infrastructure and so on.

And so it goes on. They Ofcom themselves in this technical frequency assessment criteria for shared access radio services, which is one of the documents that governs this roll out. I said that the license terms and conditions will have a requirement for equipment to start transmitting within six months of the license being issued and continue to be operational afterwards. The spectrum is not used in this time frame. Ofcom. Ofcom may revoke the licence

within one month's notice. So that'd be great. You paid £13 million and if you don't manage to get your gear rolled out quickly enough, they can revoke the licence afterwards. Now Open Signal here is commenting on this and they're saying 5G millimetre wave. The UK auction is over, but where's the action? And they're making the point that actually even in countries where that are much further ahead than Britain is, the amount of millimetre wave technology that's been rolled

out so far is extremely small. So in the in Australia it's 0.1% of all the mobile telecoms gear. In Japan it's 0.7% and in the USA it's 0.3%. And they're asking why is that? And one of the key reasons is because none of the telephone manufacturers have really rolled this out in their handset yet because this is quite a a step up from the current radio equipment that they have in their telephones. So not even high end iPhones in many countries have this.

Only in the United States and one or two other sales regions do they have this this technology at this point. So anyway, we're at the beginning of this, at this of this situation. Just want to remind everybody that some time ago we held a symposium, an expose on 5G, if you haven't seen this on the UK column website, if you want more background on this, please do go and have a look at the various

presentations there. It was very interesting and it's worth your effort if you want to oppose this. But obviously, we are at the beginning of a process. Now that the auction is complete, we're going to see this gear starting to be rolled out because the companies have to roll it out in some capacity over the next six months. So keep an eye out for that. OK, let's come back then to Sandy. And what's the latest Sandy on

solar farms in the UK? I was I want to thank a gentleman called Mark Saxby from Wiltshire, who sent me this this campaign. You know, that's a stop the line down solar farm in Wiltshire. And actually if if we could have the the slide just. Before that, sorry, that's that's that's my mistake, Sandy, you'll get you'll get that at the end. So. We'll get that at the end. No, that's great. No, that's good. Yeah. I mean this. I couldn't believe the size of

this thing. I mean, it's absolutely huge. It's a 3 3000 acre facility and it's proposed by Island Green Power, a Bermuda registered company 100% owned by an Australian venture Capital Group called Macquarie. That's MAQUARIE, which I I will be looking into, but I didn't quite have time to do it today. But this solar farm is massive. I mean, it's so huge. And if we just move on, I want

to go through these slides. Yeah, obviously they've got a barrister on it. They think they'll probably get it turned down. But the trouble is that that this bonkers Ed Miliband could override it with his bonkers renewable acceleration programme because that's what's happening. You know, this has happened with with several of these solar farm applications. They've been turned down, but he's been able to override it. Now these solar farms are, this

isn't an isolated incident. There's huge ones being prepared all over our country, all the planning applications. Now they're huge. The tracking panels have motors which allow them to follow the sun and they make a noise, so

they need deep foundations. These things, umm, and if we just keep moving, moving on through, and I'll just comment in each one because I know we're short of time E umm, each of these, umm, they have the battery energy storage as well, which is a huge fire hazard Chief, uh, fire chiefs all over the country are really worried about these because when they do burst into flames, which they do quite frequently, it take they, they actually can't put the fires out.

So, uh, and, and each one is 4 times the size of a shipping container. And they've also got these enormous, umm, uh, these, this infrastructure that's going in, uh, one of these is a place called Hullavington, which is right next to the solar panel farm. But the, the amount of infrastructure, as you can see, is absolutely enormous. So if we just keep going through the slides, yeah. Now this is interesting. This is the international comparisons.

The UK is the world's third largest food importer after China and Japan. We import 46% of our food. Other European countries take more care of their agricultural land. Now this is the worry. It's actually taking up prime agricultural land. No, in France, no solar panels on agricultural land for export to the grid. That all the large car parks are covered with the solar panels so they're using built existing buildings. In Germany, solar panels are

strictly controlled and limited. And in Italy large scale solar on agricultural, agricultural land is prohibited. But we're just using up all our wonderful agricultural land with all this stuff. Now what's interesting is I, I want to thank Bannerman for this particular slide and Cassie from the Residents Association, the National Residents Association, because it, it really makes you see how much of our land is being taken up by all this, all this infrastructure.

And the yellow ones are the solar panels, the blue ones are the wind panels, and the purple ones are the battery energy, energy storage facilities. Now, all this is, is going to take up vast amounts of energy, vast amounts of water, and it's going to destroy our, our, our farmland. So I've put in the show notes, you know, ways to, you know, the whole campaign and how you can, how you can oppose it. So we need to fight about this because this is our food

security. Thank you. Thanks, Sandy. And we'll just we'll just very quickly put the the slide up for stop lying down the campaign here so that people can see that we'll talk a lot about that and extra. I'm quite sure we've got lots of other stuff to talk about as well. So well, that's it for today. I'm going to say thank you very much to Diane, Sandy and Ben for joining me today and for you for watching. We'll be back in a few minutes If you UK column member for some UK column News Extra.

If you're not a member, maybe you'd like to join us and then you can join us in the chat box and so on as we discussed in more detail some of the topics we've covered today. Don't forget Jerem and Carl's tonight and Brian's presentation going out at 1:00 PM tomorrow. We'll see you again on at 1:00 PM on Wednesday for another news programme. See you then. Thanks for joining us. Bye bye.